The Churchtown Roadrunners AC based in Churchtown village north county Cork was founded in April 2016. The club is testament to what a small village can achieve when like minded enthusiastic runners come together for the health and fitness of a community, the group was initially formed in the summer of 2014 as a casual running club.

We train Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 8pm and weekend mornings meeting beside the playground at the GAA grounds. Training plans are organised a month in advance to compliment the targets of the club members over the coming three months. Once a month we hold a ‘Core Strength and Balancing Workshop, we also hold information evenings on topics such as Nutrition, Stretching, Physiotherapy etc. We currently have five Athletic Ireland trained coaches of varying levels within the group, mainly focusing on endurance running. We have a ‘buddy system’ for new members where new runners will be paired with another club member for the first few training weeks to introduce them to our sessions, from here they will be placed in the appropriate group for their level and goals. Weekend long runs have organised water drops. We car pool to races and organise buses if numbers allow. Our focus is primarily on road running and our club is well represented in national competitions covering all distances from 5k to Full-Marathons. We pride ourselves on recruiting members of all abilities and actively encourage each member to develop their fitness, technique, endurance and speed in an enjoyable way. We encourage all members to support locally run races as much as possible.

Along with our casual runners, we continually train and compete in 5k up to 10k races, for our competitive members our plan for 2017 is to cover the 10 mile races in the spring, stepping up to the half marathons during the summer months with the goal for a number of members being an autumn marathon.

Our club ethos is simple but important ‘work hard, play hard’. We organise social events quarterly, over the Easter weekend we go bowling, the summer bbq revolves around the whole family, young and old, our annual summer trip away to Killarney for the Run Killarney 10k and Half Marathon is a firm favourite with members and partners and we round the year off with our legendary Christmas party, a mystery bus tour – what goes on tour stays on tour! Don’t forget to stick a fiver in your back pocket on those balmy summer evenings when we are known to go for a beverage after our evening run.